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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.04 09:12:00 -
[1]
I see a lot of threads saying fix blasters or fix AC's or nerf lasers, really I see the those items as part of an entire issue with the balance of short range turrets. We all know lasers are king right.
Not exactly in the hands of skilled pilots in a 1 v 1 situation. It is all about knowing where you can hurt the enemy the most and he can hurt you the least, for ac's and blasters this is more challenging because you have to carefully manage your range to target because if you are too close you can't track and if you are to far away you lose to much dps to falloff. Pulses have an easier time at this as they only have to worry about staying far enough away from the target that they can track it and stay within optimal which can be a very broad range.
Now onto where the problem arises, fleets, yes this is where pulses shine. Their range allows them to spread out thus reducing there by reducing their transversal on the blaster or ac boats attacking their companion. On top of this the blaster and ac boats must race from target to target all the while being hit while doing minimal damage of their own. To a lesser degree this happens to blaster boats against ac boats but the ac's will be working far out in falloff so their dps will be greatly reduced.
Onto the solution, nerfing lasers is not going to fly so I came up with another solution that will pretty much handle everything. Unfortunately it can't solve everything, there will be one slight nerf to lasers proposed.
The easiest first, ac's very simply give them a 10% falloff boost. This makes them very versatile capable of getting in close to a pulse boat take advantage of better tracking or hold off from a blaster boat and use the long fall of to still keep the damage up.
Blasters aren't to hard either though slightly more complicated, first a 10% boost to optimal and second a 60% boost in falloff. This makes blasters a little easier to use and lets them do a little damage at range even if it doesn't compete with ac's or pulses.
Now for the changes where the nerfing was required. T2 ranged ammo need a bit of a tweak to reduce the overpowered and boost the underpowered.
So for scorch a reduction of the optimal multiplier to 1.25 and add a 1.25 falloff multiplier. This is a really gentle nerf and was needed so pulse lasers would lose a little of their optimal edge but they will actually gain a little bit of range when using scorch.
For barrage add a 1.5 optimal multiplier, this was needed to give a little kick to its effectiveness when compared with null fitted in the improved blasters and with even the reduced scorch.
Please keep it calm and give your input without to much extra and anyone who knows how too throw together graphs please do so.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.04 17:22:00 -
[2]
I forgot to mention I did this rebalancing on medium size turrets the same formulas may not work exactly for small and large turrets. I neglected to calculate the benefits of the proposed tracking modifiers for projectile ammo, but I did take into effect the improved damage of EMP and PP proposed.
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Hirana Yoshida
Behavioral Affront
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Posted - 2009.10.04 17:59:00 -
[3]
The main issue as far as blasters are concerned is tracking. Optimal is so low that almost any amount of movement negates a large chunk of damage, you can't sort this by adding a little range unless you increase it by a very large amount .. increasing tracking, adding a bit of falloff to T1 ammo and decreasing the heat build-up on blasters would be a much better approach.
Projectiles are already getting a major overhaul which you can read up on in the sticky thread. It is a long and muddy thread though, so be afraid
Pulse lasers have a mediocre tracking and often rely on their range to dent the enemy before it becomes an issue. With minuscule fall-off (1/3rd optimal or less) a 50/50 split that you suggest would mean an overall range decrease making their comparatively poor tracking a major issue, especially with the lower number of mids that Amarr gun boats generally has making full tackle wishful thinking in most cases.
Keep in mind that damage with the newest tracking formula stops completely once 2xFalloff is reached.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.04 20:31:00 -
[4]
Originally by: Hirana Yoshida The main issue as far as blasters are concerned is tracking. Optimal is so low that almost any amount of movement negates a large chunk of damage, you can't sort this by adding a little range unless you increase it by a very large amount .. increasing tracking, adding a bit of falloff to T1 ammo and decreasing the heat build-up on blasters would be a much better approach.
Projectiles are already getting a major overhaul which you can read up on in the sticky thread. It is a long and muddy thread though, so be afraid
Pulse lasers have a mediocre tracking and often rely on their range to dent the enemy before it becomes an issue. With minuscule fall-off (1/3rd optimal or less) a 50/50 split that you suggest would mean an overall range decrease making their comparatively poor tracking a major issue, especially with the lower number of mids that Amarr gun boats generally has making full tackle wishful thinking in most cases.
Keep in mind that damage with the newest tracking formula stops completely once 2xFalloff is reached.
I am familiar with the projectile changes thread but it fails to consider that looking at just one problem weapon system at a time will only lead to more problems.
The exact same things happens to AC's but because of their even shorter optimal they lose more even damage than blasters. Adding range is actually very effective at solving the tracking problem of blasters without letting them melt a smaller clase ship disportionately well.
AC's are getting are not exactly getting an overhaul only a rebalance of ammo damages to make them the same as the other turrets and a tracking bonus for ammo. The ammo damage change I used in my figures, but it is a little difficult to calcutlate in how the ammo tracking bonus will work out.
Pulse lasers do have have poorer tracking but it really isn't that poor as it is 75% that of AC's. Even with the changes to scorch I suggest they will have an maximium effective range far greater than blasters or ac's. Consider that at maximium optimal and not even into falloff a pulse laser is facing an ac 86% of the way into falloff meaning the ac will only be doing 57% of their dps even on stationary target. Blasters will be at 100% falloff doing 50% of their dps on a stationary targert.
So Pulse lasers with the new scorch at their optimal range will still be tracking 75% as effective and doing 175% of the damage of AC's loaded with barrage, that is indeed a sorry state of afairs when compared with the current 75% of the tracking and 655% of the dps when compared to ACs. Yes
And yes I do understand the formula tracking formula it is how I came up with my numbers. I calculated actual dps applied to a target in certain bands of ranges and with the target at various speeds. Then I tweaked optimal and falloff numbers to increase the usefulness of ac's and blasters when compared to lasers.
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R Mika
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Posted - 2009.10.04 23:01:00 -
[5]
Hirana has it 100% correct concerning blasters. The real issue is tracking, not range. Its very fair if the higest DPS weapon in the game be hard to use. However right now blasters are not the highest DPS weapon, and near impossible to use.
Both projectiles and blasters (and rails, too) need some adjustment to optimal/falloff. But in my opinion, giving blasters any more range would be a mistake. More optimal, and less falloff would be nice, though. ACs need both optimal and falloff.
I am glad we are continuing to yell and scream about this topic, though. Maybe once the devs aren't so hung over from fanfest they will take a look.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.05 02:42:00 -
[6]
I looked at adding tracking to blasters and ac's but they ended up with face melting power against smaller ships than their guns were intended to hit so I ruled it out. Essentialy let the blasters hit faster targets by staying further from the target with out giving them the ability to melt small ships.
I may have under boosted AC's they may need a slight optimal bonus or more falloff to balance things a little more, but until I see it in practice I feel it is better to play it safe.
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Hirana Yoshida
Behavioral Affront
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Posted - 2009.10.05 11:35:00 -
[7]
Originally by: Kalia Masaer I looked at adding tracking to blasters and ac's but they ended up with face melting power against smaller ships than their guns were intended to hit so I ruled it out.
That is just it. Blasters are supposed to melt faces when in range, but damage reduction from first fall-off and then tracking means that they are never doing anything near their potential dps. Their mad potential damage is (or was) balanced by the short range, but QR limited the ability to control transversal when the god-webs were killed, hence my tracking preference.
AC's are not much of a problem due to speed/tank of the ships that use them, so the face melt is only really present with both ships stationary and Minmatar hulls buckle fast when stationary In exchange they have a lot of ships with tracking bonuses to allow for a better use of fall-off/speed thus lowering the damage.
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Kalia Masaer
Rosa Castellum
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Posted - 2009.10.05 21:07:00 -
[8]
Adding range allows the blasters to melt the face of any appropriate size ship that gets into range, i.e. cruiser vs. cruiser. Adding tracking lets them melt any size ship that gets in range i.e. cruiser vs. frigate and that is not acceptable
Currently if you look at the numbers when you calculate the actual DPS applied to target, meaning when you take into effect transversal and falloff, Blasters still utterly dominate ACs until the blaster is almost all the way into falloff. And if you compare Blaster Cannons with 800mm AC it is even worse as the blasters actually track better than the ACs.
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